NOVEMBER 26, 2012

PHYS 2303

HOW DOES THE SUN

SHINE?
How the Super-Kamiokande and the Sudbury Neutrino
Observatory experiments helped prove that the sun's source of
energy is nuclear fusion

I. INTRODUCTION
The sun is an integral part of our lives. It provides light energy for
photosynthesis, it drives the water cycle and thermohaline circulation, and it keeps
the Earth's climate suitable for human life. Though we depend upon and can easily
observe the effects of solar radiation, how exactly does the sun keep radiating
energy? What is the source of the sun's energy? In the 1900s scientists proposed
that the sun used a process called nuclear fusion to continually generate energy.
However, experimental observations clashed with hypothetical calculations, and
scientists were not able to reconcile the two until the new millennium. While several
groups of scientists all around the world conducted many experiments to determine
and prove how the sun created energy, the conclusive experimental evidence came
from two experiments: the Super-Kamiokande in Japan and the Sudbury Neutrino
Observatory in Canada. But first, let's explore the origin of the problem that
stumped the scientists for so long.

II. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In the late 1900s at the height of the investigation of nuclear fusion, John N.
Bahcall used a mathematical model of the sun, the Standard Solar Model, to predict
the outcome of the Homestake Experiment. The Homestake Experiment was the
first of several experiments to look for evidence that the sun uses a nuclear fusion
process called the proton-proton chain. However, the Homestead Experiment
showed unexpected results. At the heart of the controversy was the solar neutrino
problem.

A. The Standard Model for Particle Physics

The Standard Model for particle physics (Standard Model) is a theory about
how elementary particles, or particles smaller than the size of an atom, interact

with each other. It began to take form as a theory in the mid-1900s and has since
been supported by evidence from multiple experiments. Though the Standard Model
describes several elementary particles, only leptons are particularly significant in
the case of solar radiation.
Leptons are elementary particles. There are two types of leptons: electrically
charged leptons and electrically neutral leptons. The three flavors, or kinds, of

charged leptons are electrons (

e ), muons ( ), and tauons ( ). Similarly,

the three flavors of neutral leptons are electron neutrinos ( e ), muon neutrinos (

), and tau neutrinos ( ). For the majority of the 1900s, scientists believed
that neutrinos were massless. This meant that it would be impossible for neutrinos
to change flavors. (For example, an electron neutrino couldn't spontaneously
become a muon neutrino.) In addition, neutrinos rarely interact with other particles
and they travel at about the speed of light. They are produced in stars, in particle
accelerators or nuclear reactors and in natural radioactivity. Through a nuclear
fusion process called the proton-proton chain, our sun emits electron neutrinos,
which are more energetic and thus easier to detect than muon neutrinos and tau
neutrinos.6

B. The Standard Solar Model

The Standard Solar Model (SSM) is a mathematical description of the sun, in
which the sun is treated as a massive sphere of gas. It uses observed and measured
data, like the sun's radius, age, composition, and luminosity, or the rate at which
the sun radiates energy.7 Much like meteorologists use complex models to observe

and predict weather phenomenon, physicists use the SSM to model and predict
solar phenomenon. The SSM had its origins in the mid-1800s when scientists began
speculating how the sun generated energy.
By the early 1900s, scientists had ruled out gravitational potential energy and
nuclear fission as sources of the sun's energy. Using gravitational potential energy,
Lord Kelvin calculated the sun's age to be a paltry 30 million years old in 1862. 2
However, scientists knew that the sun must have been at least hundreds of millions
of years old in order to account for the current rate of erosion on earth. Nuclear
fission was similarly shot down because although Pierre Curie observed that radium
salts constantly emitted heat instead of cooling down to match the surrounding air, 2
later astronomical observations demonstrated that the sun was mostly made of
hydrogen and other light elements instead of heavy radioactive elements like
uranium and radium.6
In 1920, F.W. Aston precisely measured the mass of several atoms, and
observed that even though four hydrogen nuclei (four protons) and a helium-4
nucleus (two protons and two neutrons) should have had the same mass, the mass
of four hydrogen nuclei were heavier than a single helium-4 nucleus. 6

Figure 1 Four hydrogen atoms are heavier than a single helium nucleus. (Picture from
source 2.)

Using Albert Einstein's equation from the Theory of Special Relativity,

E=mc

, Sir Arthur Eddington noticed that since the helium nucleus was lighter

than four separate hydrogen nuclei, the helium nucleus had less energy. Thus,
because atoms are always looking to reach a more stable, lower energy state, the
hydrogen nuclei would want to combine together. The process, called nuclear
fusion, would release a lot of energy because the helium nucleus had less mass
than the original hydrogen nuclei. Eddington proposed that the sun's source of
energy came from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. 2

C. Nuclear Fusion
By 1938, physicists knew how nuclear fusion should work in stars. However,
they still had no proof that our sun used nuclear fusion for energy. C.F. von
Weizsacker discovered a nuclear cycle called the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO)
cycle, which is how stars more massive than our own sun create energy. Our sun
uses the proton-proton chain (p-p chain), a process discovered by Hans Bethe, in
which hydrogen fuses into helium.6

The P-P Chain3

99.75% of the time, the following reaction occurs:

++ e ( 0.42 MeV )
1
1
2

1H + 1 H 1 H +e
Two hydrogen atoms combine to form a hydrogen atom with a
neutron (deuterium), a positively charged electron (positron), and an
electron neutrino with an energy of 0.42 million electron-volts.

But 0.25% of the time, this reaction occurs:

1

+ 1H 1H + e (1.44 MeV )
1

1 H +e
Two hydrogen atoms and an electron combine to form deuterium, and
an electron neutrino with an energy of 1.44 million electron-volts.

The

2
1

then undergoes another reaction:

2
1

H + 1H 2He +

Though there are a few different branches of the p-p chain, the reactants are

always hydrogen protons (

1
1

H ) and the products are always helium-4 (

4
2

He ) and

some electrons, positrons, photons, and electron neutrinos. (For the complete p-p
chain process, refer to the Appendix.) Most of the electron neutrinos produced by
the p-p chain have a low energy of around 1.5 MeV. However, the electron neutrinos

resulting from the decay of boron-8 (

8
5

B ) have an energy of 15 MeV, which is ten

times more energetic! Though these electron neutrinos are rarer, they are easier to
detect than other electron neutrinos because they have a higher energy. 6
How exactly could the scientists prove that solar radiation is due to the
energy released during the p-p chain process? The sun is so large and massive that
it takes about 100,000 years for photons generated by nuclear fusion at the center
of the sun to reach the sun's surface.10 However, neutrinos are a good candidate to
detect and observe because they interact weakly with other matter and can thus
reach earth from the center of the sun in about eight minutes. 10 Neutrinos react so
weakly with matter that about a hundred billion neutrinos from the sun pass
through your thumbnail every second, yet only one or two will interact with your
body in your lifetime!6

D. The Solar Neutrino Problem

In 1968, Raymond Davis and John N. Bahcall led the Homestake Experiment
at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. They filled a 100,000 gallon
tank with a common dry-cleaning fluid named tetrachloroethylene ( C2 Cl 4 ), which
was buried in a mine deep underground in order to prevent interference from other
cosmic particles.3 When an electron neutrino from the sun penetrated the tank and

collided with a chlorine-37 atom (

37
17

37
17

Cl ), the collision energy would transform

Cl into a radioactive isotope of argon, argon-37 (

37
18

Ar ).3 The

37
18

Ar

could then

be extracted from the tank and counted. Each collision and subsequent
transformation is called an electron neutrino event.
Prior to the experiment, Bahcall used the SSM to calculate that they should
have found 7.53 solar neutrino units (SNU), which translates to a solar electron
neutrino flux of about 5x106 neutrinos/cm2s,13 or about 7.5 argon atoms per 1,000

gallons of

C2 Cl 4

every day.5 However, Davis only found 2.20.3 SNU, which is

about 30% of what Bahcall had predicted.5 More than half of the predicted electron
neutrinos were missing, and this discrepancy was named the name solar neutrino
problem.
There were three possible sources of the solar neutrino problem. Since
Bahcall's calculations depended on the SSM, the data used to model the SSM could
be incorrect. Similarly, Davis could have miscounted the number of electron
neutrino events during the Homestake Experiment. Or, something not predicted by
the Standard Model occurs to solar electron neutrinos between the time they leave
the sun and the time they arrive on the Earth. Since other scientists had checked
and improved upon Bahcall's calculations with no significant difference, and other
scientists reproduced the solar neutrino problem with detectors using different
elements, most scientists believed that the problem was due to an error in the
SSM.3 However, two scientists had a different idea

III. NEUTRINO OSCILLATIONS

In 1969, Bruno Pontecorvo and Vladimir Gribov proposed that the discrepancy
between the number of electron neutrino events that were predicted by Bahcall
using the SSM, and the amount of electron neutrino events that actually occurred in
the Homestake Experiment was due to a problem with the Standard Model instead
of a problem with the SSM.4 Physicists had assumed that the solar neutrino problem
was a result of the SSM being incorrect because it was a model based on
observations and measurements while the Standard Model had stood up to multiple
experiments. However, Pontecorvo and Gribov hypothesized that neutrinos
oscillate, or change back and forth, between different flavors (electron neutrino,
muon neutrino, tau neutrino). In order to oscillate, neutrinos would have to have
mass, which contradicted the Standard Model that assumed that neutrinos were
massless.6
Neutrino oscillations would explain the solar neutrino problem because
although the sun only emits electron neutrinos, the electron neutrinos would
constantly change their flavors to muon neutrinos or tau neutrinos during their
transmission to the Earth. So, only a fraction of the electron neutrinos that the sun
emits would make it to the Earth as electron neutrinos, and the rest would have
oscillated into muon neutrinos or tau neutrinos. Since the Homestead Experiment
was only sensitive to electron neutrinos, perhaps the total electron neutrino flux
that Bahcall predicted was correct and the missing neutrino flux consisted of
undetected muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos.

A. Previous Experiments

After the Homestake Experiment produced the solar neutrino problem,

scientists all over the world sought to reproduce the experiment with detectors that
were capable of detecting lower energy solar neutrinos like muon and tau neutrinos.

The Gallium Experiment (GALLEX) in Italy and the Soviet-American Gallium

Experiment (SAGE) in Russia used tanks filled with gallium trichloride ( GaCl 3 ) to
detect incoming solar electron neutrinos. The electron neutrinos would collide with a

gallium-71 atom (

71
31

Ga ) and convert to a germanium-71 atom (

71
32

), which could

be detected and counted.5 Since gallium could detect neutrinos with energies above
0.23 MeV, it could detect more neutrinos than chlorine could. 1 Both GALLEX and
SAGE detected 60-70% of the neutrino events predicted by the SSM. 16 Similarly, the
Kamiokande experiment (1987-1990) in Japan used a tank filled that was filled with
3,000 tons of pure water and surrounded by 1,000 photomultiplier tubes. 9 Like
GALLEX and SAGE, Kamiokande observed about 55% of the neutrino events
predicted9. These three experiments confirmed that the solar neutrino problem
existed and was not just an error in the Homestead Experiment.
So, with increasingly sensitive detectors, the gap between the amount of
electron neutrino events predicted by the SSM and the amount of total (electron,
muon, tau) neutrino events observed was closing. But detectors that were able to
tell the difference between electron, muon, and tau neutrino events were needed in
order to show that neutrino oscillation existed, thus proving that the sun uses the pp chain as a source of energy.

B. Super-Kamiokande
Super-Kamiokande (Super-K), a detector built in a mine 1,000 meters
underground in Hida, Gifu, Japan, succeeded the Kamiokande experiment. The
Super-K detector is a stainless steel, cylindrical tank that is 39 meters in diameter
and 42 meters tall.11 The tank is filled with 50,000 tons of ultra-pure water, and is
surrounded by about 13,000 photomultiplier tubes. 11 Construction began in 1991

and followed by experiments 1996. The goals of Super-K were to find evidence of
neutrino oscillation and evidence of proton decay. 12
When a neutrino collides with an electron or the nucleus of a water molecule,
the product of the collision is a charged particle that moves faster than the phase
velocity of light in water. This charged particle creates a blue cone of light, a
phenomenon known as Cherenkov radiation 13, and the photomultiplier tubes detect
and record the shape of the ring at the base of the cone. Because the rings are
distinctive to the type of neutrino that caused the Cherenkov radiation, Super-K
would be able to tell if the incoming neutrino was an electron, muon, or tau

neutrino. For example, electron neutrinos produce fuzzy rings, while muon neutrinos
produce rings with sharp edges.13
Figure 2. A picture of the Super-K detector (from source 3).

C. Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) is a detector built 6,800 feet
underground in a mine near Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Like Super-K, the SNO used
water to create Cherenkov radiation when struck by solar neutrinos, and it used
9,600 photomultiplier tubes. However, the SNO used heavy water instead of regular

water, that is, instead of water with hydrogen (H2O), the water used deuterium
(D2O).16

Figure 3. A diagram of the SNO (from source 3).

D. Combined Results Confirm Neutrino Oscillation

In 1998, Super-K observed that the number of upward going atmospheric
muon neutrinos was about half of the number of downward going atmospheric
muon neutrinos. However, the number of observed atmospheric neutrinos should be
the same regardless of where you are. This supported neutrino oscillation in
atmospheric neutrinos because some of the muon neutrinos must have changed
into a different neutrino flavor.8
Using heavy water, the SNO was able to detect all three flavors of neutrinos.
Thus, it was able to run experiments where the detector was sensitive only to
electron neutrinos.16 In 2001, the SNO reported that after 1,000 solar electron
neutrino events, the flux due to electron neutrinos was about (1.750.14) x 10 6
neutrinos/cm2s.13 So, solar electron neutrino events accounted for about 35% of the
total solar electron neutrino events that Bahcall predicted. On the other hand,
Super-K ran experiments with the detector sensitive to all solar neutrinos. It
calculated a flux of (5.441) x 106 neutrinos/cm2s.13 Super-K's measured flux of all
solar neutrinos was very close to Bahcall's original estimate of flux (5x10 6

neutrinos/cm2s) for just solar electron neutrinos. Thus, the missing electron neutrino
flux in the Homestead Experiment were actually present, but in the form of the
harder to detect muon and tau neutrinos.

IV. CONCLUSION
After four decades, Super-K and the SNO finally resolved the solar neutrino
problem by showing evidence of neutrino oscillations. As Pontecorvo and Gribov
suggested, although the sun only emits electron neutrinos, the electron neutrinos
switch back and forth between other neutrino flavors during their flight to the Earth.
So Bahcall's initial predictions for electron neutrino flux during the Homestake
Experiment were correct, but for the total neutrino flux of all flavors instead of
solely electron neutrinos. With the solar neutrino problem solved, scientists also had
proof that the sun uses the p-p chain, a nuclear fusion process, to fuel the solar
energy that life on Earth depends on.
However, the SSM predicts that most solar neutrinos have energies that are
below the detection thresholds for water detectors such as Super-K and the SNO.
Thus, more experiments are lower energies are needed to better understand
neutrino oscillation and whether the process is different at lower energies than it is
at higher energies. Two such experiments, ICARUS and OPERA, are currently running
in Gran Sasso, Italy. Both experiments use different detectors to observe neutrino
oscillations from muon neutrinos to tau neutrinos. (In 2010, OPERA observed its first
tau neutrino event.)15